


Just Keep Following The Heartlines On Your Hand

by FiliTheLionKing (IAmYourWatson)



Category: The Old Guard (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Immortal (The Old Guard), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angsty Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Art Historian Joe, Childhood Friends, Eventual Smut, Everyone Is As Normal As The Old Guard Can Get, Everyone Works At A Museum Or Is A Neighbor, Fluff In The Beginning And End, Former Priest Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Idiots in Love, Love Letters, M/M, Restoration Expert Booker, Soulmarks, falling in love over letters, not epistolary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:27:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26625922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmYourWatson/pseuds/FiliTheLionKing
Summary: Sebastien Le Livre in 17 when he meets Yusuf al-Kaysani. Meeting him is like meeting the rising sun, and for the first time in his short but miserable life, he smiles without bitterness. Joe gives him love, and kindness, and mischief, and a new name: Booker. They refuse to be separated. They plan to spend the rest of their lives together. They are happy. Their skins are bare. Neither of them have a Soulmark to bind them together, but they don't need one. Together, they are happy.And then Nicky di Genova moves in next door to Andy and Quynh, and Booker's world plunges back into darkness.Time and distance will heal his heart, or so he hopes. He will survive this. That's what he does: he survives. He just needs some time alone to relearn what it was like before the sun shone on him and him alone.So who the hell is sending him all these letters?ON HIATUS!
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 13
Kudos: 62





	Just Keep Following The Heartlines On Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This might take a bit to finish, but I beg your indulgence as I'm still writing YGUBG(WYDASOW) and trying to get that finished too. 
> 
> So I kind of accidentally challenged [j_gabrielle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_gabrielle/pseuds/j_gabrielle) to write fics based off of my ramblings about a Soulmate!AU, and here we go. Part two will be on its way soon! Please read her fic [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26511400)!

Sebastien Le Livre is born without a Soulmark, and isn’t that just fucking typical?

In a life filled with ups and downs, and with more downs than ups, the youngest Le Livre boy would spend more days than not wishing that his mind was as blank as his skin. Maybe then he wouldn’t mind it so much when his mother left him, and his father drank himself to death, and his brothers and sisters all grew up and moved as far away from him as possible. Maybe then all he would feel was indifference when the other kids at school bullied him, even the ones like him, who had no Marks. Maybe then he wouldn’t wish, night after night, that there was someone out there meant just for him. Someone that wouldn’t leave him, or hate him, or ignore him, or make him feel like something lesser just because his skin was as empty as the new moon.

As he came into his teenage years, he began to favor long sleeves and dark clothes to hide what wasn’t there. He put his head down and forced himself to survive, picking up the same bad habits as his father in a cruel twist of irony. Teenage angst always looked so melodramatic on TV, but now that he was living it, Sebastien couldn’t find it in himself to sneer at the cheesy storylines anymore. It brought him some small comfort that, somewhere out there, there were people just as miserable as he was. He drank (too young, far too young) himself to sleep at night, dragged himself out of bed just to avoid his foster siblings and their early morning screeching, and did his best to retain some smalls bits of information from his days at school. Someday, he would get out of this place. Someday, he would be free. To do what, he didn’t know, but anything had to be better than this.

And then, on the first day of his last year before university, he met the sun.

Yusuf al-Kaysani, or Joe, as he insisted on being known as, walked into his first class of the day like sunlight dancing across the surface of a river. He was bright in a way nothing ever was in Sebastien’s life, always smiling, always quick to laugh, with a love of books and poetry that made Sebastien want to take him by the hand and run for the nearest library. Joe was so vibrant, so vivid, so present that Sebastien finally knew what it was like to be awake. He had been sleepwalking through life until now. With Joe, the sun had risen, and so had Sebastien.

Somehow, through some act of God or Providence or whatever the priests called it, Joe looked around the room, met Sebastien’s eyes, and sat right down next to him and began talking. Somehow, Joe had taken one look at the gloomy, Markless, brooding goth kid and decided that yes, this one? I’ll take him. He’s mine now. My friend. For the first time in years, Sebastien felt a smile tugging at his lips, one that wasn’t laced with sarcasm or bitterness. He laughed that day, and Joe’s smile became megawatts brighter, and Sebastien laughed again. It was like they had known each other their whole lives. Joe smiled, and all was right in the world.

Sebastien fell in love.

* * *

The discovery that Joe was Markless too shouldn’t have brought so much happiness to Sebastien’s heart, but he was a selfish boy by nature, so he allowed himself one brief moment of joy before pushing it away and trying to be a better man.

That last year of school was the best year of Sebastien’s life so far, and he had the strange feeling that things would only get better from there. Joe was already proficient in French, and upon hearing Sebastien’s last name, had decided that he “looked more like a Booker, can I call you Booker?” And so, he was Booker now. It felt like a rebirth. It felt like absolution. It felt like home.

Slowly, color leeched back into his wardrobe. They were muted still, dark blues and greys and soft browns, but he didn’t soak up the sun in summer anymore, so he considered it progress.

Joe made Booker want to pay attention in class, to actually learn something beyond the bare necessities. They did their homework together. They studied for midterms and finals together. They discussed what they had learned that day, and how wrong their teachers sometimes were, and how they wished they could have been there for all the great events of history. Where Joe excelled in Literature and History, Booker flourished in Chemistry and Technology. Mathematics was their common ground, Sports their shared passion, and both learned very quickly that Cooking was something neither of them would ever quite master. They took as many classes together as they could, becoming notorious for their passed notes and innate talent for getting out of the trouble they found themselves in. When their final scores came back, they learned that they’d passed with flying colors. They celebrated with ice cream and a football game.

Not long after they met, Joe introduced Booker to his parents. Booker was wary, but Joe’s parents were just like their son, patient and kind to this mysterious, sad boy, and he found himself loving them as if they were his own mother and father. Soon enough, it was strange if Booker _didn’t_ come home with Joe, and his picture somehow found its way to their mantle before the year was out. Booker cried one night, three months in, when Joe’s mom gave him a sweater she’d knitted herself. Joe’s father had wrapped him up in a warm hug, tactile in a way Booker’s father had never been. Joe’s brothers had teased him gently about his crying, but it was hard to ignore the shining in their own eyes when Booker had hesitantly hugged them too. When Booker aged out of the system, right before they left for university, Joe’s father had taken him aside and said that, no matter what, he would always have a place in their home. Booker was loved here, and he always would be. Joe watched from the doorway as Booker broke down yet again, calling Joe’s father “Papa” so quietly that he almost didn’t hear it. He shared a watery smile with his father and backed away, letting Booker have his moment in peace.

They left for university together, refusing to be separated. Sometimes, strangers would assume that they were Soulmates. Booker would always blush, and Joe would always laugh. He would say that they did not need to be Soulmates to be close. Booker would just shake his head and smile too, keeping his silence as he let Joe easily change the topic of conversation. Oh, how he wished that Joe was his Soulmate. Maybe their lack of Marks was a Mark in and of itself. Throughout their university years, he wondered what their Soulmarks might’ve looked like, drawing them out in the margins of his notes or in the corners of books and magazines. Joe might be the artist of the two of them, but Booker could hold his own.

Time passed, and together they grew from boys into men. Joe got his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art History while Booker completed a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. They settled into good jobs together, taking positions at the local museum. Joe would curate exhibits and create youth education programs, while Booker restored badly damaged paintings and studied new methods of chemical preservation. They lived in a small but comfortable flat near the city center. Every other weekend, they’d drive back home to visit Joe’s parents. Every summer, they’d spend a week in Greece or Romania or Denmark or wherever they felt like going. They made friends with their coworkers: Andy in Sculptures and Quynh in Historical Textiles and Nile in Renaissance Art. They even made friends with their neighbors, James Copley and his wife on one side, and Lykon on the other. They fell into a happy rhythm, and Booker let himself believe that he would never know a greater happiness, and he was content. All was well.

And then Nicky di Genova moved in next door to Andy and Quynh, because isn’t that just fucking typical?

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Heartlines" by Florence + The Machine.
> 
> Come scream at me at [comme-un-livre-ouvert.tumblr.com](https://comme-un-livre-ouvert.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
